Knowing, gala, nonpareil, Joan and Bill billow back into town for the Bernstein/Bolcom bash New York Festival of Song is flinging starting on Tuesday the 23rd, and their timing couldn’t be better: we’ve finally finished the trio of cabaret songs we’d not have started if Joan hadn’t nudged. They begin with the title “They Call Me Twelve-Tone Rose.” J had always wanted to compose a cabaret song by that title, and one day the lyric (albeit with one judicious pronoun change) came to me: a week later I idly mentioned the title to Joan at Marin’s birthday reception (J hadn’t started the music) and, after a week of J demurring, “I don’t hear it yet,” Joan dashed off a postcard challenging, “Do you want to make a diva beg?” J composed it (tastily) that autumn: Joan and Bill introduced it (equally tastily) at Symphony Space that spring; and a year later we co-wrote an école-de-Cole Porter party song in which Bill’s surname figures oenophilically. Herewith:
(A well-heeled subscriber, on her phone, toys with the newest, smallest, most fashionable personal music player.)
Darling, don’t be angry, but that concert? Not tonight.
No, keep the ticket, really: go! Enjoy!
I know: it’s so last minute— please don’t take it as a slight.
It’s only that I’ve purchased the most marvelous new toy.
She inserts the earbuds.
This small invention (right now it’s playing ‘Geny Kissin!)
Has wholly revolutionized the way I listen:
I now hear Joshua Bell playing all Ravel
over crème caramel at Chanterelle,
Or Natalie Dessay interpreting Messaien.
(Such a feast!)
I love Emanuel Ax playing Arnold Bax
as I choose my slacks from the racks at Saks,
Or Barbra Streisand in Floyd’s Of Mice and Men…
(It wasn’t released.)
I play my Thomas Adés or C. P. E. Bach
during Pilates at the Reebok,
Then out to the street to Purcell’s Suite from Queen Mab.
I need my hit of Max Roach when in business class:
If I’m stuck in coach, give me Philip Glass,
Die Schöne Müllerin, or Gunther Schuller in the cab.
Why do I need the concert hall?
Why do I need performance at all?
With the tickets and the sitter
and the parking and the chatter…it’s a drag.
Give me my discs and one fast hour,
And I’ll have the classical section of Tower…
(wistfully) Tower…
Alphabetized, and perfectly sized,
for even an evening bag.
So play me Sondheim or Takemitsu,
when it’s time to walk my Shih-Tzu,
Or Ruslan and Ludmilla, if not the Debussy La Mer.
I crave my Malfitano, singing Corigliano,
with Robert Spano on piano,
with my Montepulciano, at Da Silvano,
Or a Bolla with Bolcom passeth all compare!
Darling, it’s truly a new world order.
Now with my magical new recorder,
Why on earth would anybody ever want
or need to hear their music live?
With my perfectly marvelous invention–
(Here’s Sousa, Ned Rorem, the Schönberg Brettl-lieder!)
Its benefits too numerous to mention–
(La Chiusa, and Forum, and Adam Guettel lieder!)
Best of all, I barely need to pay attention…
She thinks a moment.
Darling…
Meet me down at “Will Call” at seven-forty-five.
(“Marvelous Invention” is published here.)
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